79 High Street (Former Commercial Bank)

79 High Street is a former commercial bank built in 1869 by David Rhind, with later additions. It is a three-storey, three-bay, L-plan building designed in a symmetrical corner sited palazzo style, featuring ancillary ranges at the rear. The exterior includes hoodmoulds and lugged architraved windows, a pillastered balustrade to the central tripartite and pedimented window, and deep bracketed overhanging eaves. The building is constructed from coursed stugged blonde sandstone ashlar with smooth rusticated ashlar quoins. The ground floor has earlier 20th century marble and granite cladding, while the first and second floors feature moulded bracketed string and cill courses. At the rear, there is a plain two-storey, two-bay range with a band course and a single-storey piended section behind, made of random whin rubble with sandstone margins. There are also later 20th century flat-roofed rendered extensions and a brick bin store to the far left.

The ground floor has hardwood margin-paned windows and double timber doors with carved detail fanlights, while the upper floors predominantly have uPVC windows that are out of character, with some four-pane timber sash and case windows on the rear elevation. The rear ground floor windows have bars. The roof is low pitched and covered with slate, featuring a valley at the rear and a corniced ashlar end stack with clay cans. Cast-iron downpipes are recessed in the string courses.

Inside, the ground floor has been partitioned to create new offices, and the upper floors have been converted into flats.